


Breathsucker

by Omorka



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-19
Updated: 2010-03-19
Packaged: 2017-10-08 03:20:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omorka/pseuds/Omorka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the depths of space, a starship is too full of light for the Void not to notice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breathsucker

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt "_Something_ is waiting for the lights to go out."

There's no day or night on board a starship.

The ship runs in shifts; broadly speaking, there's a regular shift and a swing shift, and the length of each is the prerogative of the captain. On ships with human captains, they're each twelve hours long, and since the plurality of Federation captains are human, that's the default setting. During the regular shift, the lights in the corridors and the common areas are on full; during the swing shift, they're dimmed. But they're always on. A starship is a well-lit place.

Most sentient life grows up planetside, and it's this environment that a starship reproduces. Inside are an approximation of the gravitational pull of a planet, the light of its star and moons, its atmosphere, its biosphere. A surface to walk on. Air to breathe. Light.

Beyond the metal skin is the reality. Most of the cosmos is made up of empty space. Much of it is between galaxies, but there's a great deal between stars as well. The business of a starship -hence the name - is in solar systems, where stars are, and planets, the stuff of the ship and of the crew's bodies. They spend as little time as possible in the interstellar space in between.

Out here, there is only the darkness between stars, and the void without matter. Here only the faintest waves of gravity reach. The ships shuttle back and forth between islands of matter through the Great Empty, and pay it no mind.

That Which Is Not has noticed.

\---

Bones tapped the dimmer switch as he left his quarters. He'd opaqued his windows. Other crewmen seemed to enjoy the passing stars, but he preferred seeing them with several miles of atmosphere in between.

On a whim, he turned the knob to bring them back to clear. Outside, they shone brightly, if distorted by their passage at Warp Three, but all he saw was the darkness in between.

"That's not a sky," he grumbled. "That's a photon's graveyard." He turned to head out to start his shift, the door swishing shut behind him.

The indirect LEDs that lit his cabin were indifferent to his leaving. It was several minutes later that one of them blinked and went out.

Outside, what was not a thing grew slightly more content.

Before long, they would all go.

A second light flickered into darkness.


End file.
